John Keats

The English Romantic poet John Keats was the oldest of four surviving children. As a child in school, he had a volatile personality and got in many fights. In his teens, Keats began focusing on his studies, excelling in reading and writing. Keats became a medical student at King’s College of London, but after he received his apothecary’s license, he resolved to become a poet, publishing sonnets such as “O Solitude” and a volume of verse, Poems. Keats had only been writing poetry about six years and had attained little critical or commercial success when he died of tuberculosis at age 25. Today, Keats’s poems are among the most esteemed in English literature.